


Wishes Three

by takethembystorm



Series: Tea Break [44]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 16:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8108746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: In which Adrien is a wish-granting cat, with one catch: for every wish granted, a proportionate price must be paid.





	1. Tit for Tat

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://amiwiils.tumblr.com/post/150310262113).

“So three wishes,” Marinette says, her voice laden with skepticism.

“Ah,” the cat---the freaking cat, size of a bread loaf, ears, tail, beautiful green eyes, claws, jet-black fur, squishy black jellybean paw pads, the _cat_ \---says, holding up a paw. “Wrong. As many wishes as you care.”

“What’s the catch?” Marinette says after a moment.

The cat blinks slowly at her, then yawns.

“Oh, don’t give me that,” she says. “Magic wish-granting talking cats don’t pop up out of nowhere and offer some poor baker’s daughter anything she can think of with just a simple wish. There’s got to be a catch.”

“Or I could just be a very convincing hallucination,” the cat replies.

Marinette scratches the cat behind his ear; he leans into her touch with a low purr.

“You don’t feel like a hallucination,” she says. “And, well, I thought hallucinations usually aren’t this coherent.”

“True,” the cat says. “For everything you wish for, you must deliver unto me something in return of equal value.”

“Okay,” Marinette says. “That’s it, that’s the only condition?”

“Yes.”

“And who decides what I need to repay you?”

“You may offer if that pleases you,” the cat says. His tail flicks back and forth, once, precisely, green eyes half-lidded, unblinking.

“Okay.” Marinette thinks for a minute. “Make my parents’ business---no, I’m sorry, I wish that my parents’ business were successful.”

“Such a big wish so suddenly,” the cat says.

“The wish is made,” Marinette says. “So you need to do it. No takebacks.”

“So long as you can offer something of equal value,” the cat says. “Shall I name it or shall you?”

Marinette looks at him for a minute, then shakes her head. “I can’t think of anything,” she says. “Go ahead.”

“Make for me,” the cat says, “a place in your home.”

Marinette blinks at the cat. “Uh. Done.”

“And done.”

A number of, well, miraculous things happen. The loan her parents had been trying to get for half a year is approved, and they move to a corner-store bakery right next to Notre Dame. Somehow word about the quality of her father’s baking spreads so widely that on opening morning the line stretches twice around the block, and fails to abate the next day, and then the next week, and then the next month. The website her mother sets up crashes twice in the span of a week from the number of people visiting. So on and so forth.

* * *

They look at her askance when she shows up one day in the middle of their moving in with a large black tomcat cradled in her arms, purring comfortably.

“Where did you find that, dear?” Sabine says.

“Alley,” Marinette says. “Can I keep him?”

“No, Marinette,” Sabine says. “You don’t know where he’s been.”

Tom reaches over and pats the cat gently on the head. The cat in turn bats playfully at his fingers with a paw before leaping out of Marinette’s arms and padding over to Sabine, butting his head against her leg.

“Pretty tame for a feral cat,” Tom says. “Maybe he’s someone’s pet.”

“We’ll put up some signs, then,” Sabine says. “Marinette, he’s your responsibility, make sure he doesn’t get into anything or break anything valuable.”

The cat doesn’t, and nothing comes of the LOST CAT FOUND signs that Marinette spends a day putting up around the neighborhood, and soon enough Adrien is a regular fixture in the Dupain-Cheng household, with, after some insistence from Marinette, his own plate at the dinner table and his own little bed in Marinette’s room.

* * *

Adrien pads up to the foot of Marinette’s loft bed and mrowls. When no response is forthcoming he leaps up, scrabbles briefly, and climbs up the ladder.

Marinette is curled up on her bed, shaking quietly.

“What’s wrong---”

“Go away,” Marinette hisses, swiping at Adrien, who leaps up over the clumsy blow, flicking an ear.

“What’s wrong,” Adrien repeats, dragging at her blanket and pulling it up over her before curling up against her.

“Ah,” he says after a moment’s thought. “Chloe again?”

No response from Marinette.

“Chloe again,” Adrien says, resigned.

“Can’t you just,” Marinette says, “make her go away? Leave? Forever?”

“I could.”

“What would the price be?”

“Too high for you,” Adrien says.

“Some magic wish-granting cat you are,” Marinette says.

Adrien’s purr redoubles.

After a while, Marinette says, quietly, “I have a wish.”

“Yes?”

“I wish that I’d have a friend,” she says. “Someone who’ll stand up for me. Stand up against Chloe. Someone who’ll care for me like I care for them.”

Adrien is quiet for a long while, purring. Then, he says, “I can do that.”

“What price?”

“Such a wish has a high price, Marinette---”

“What price?” she repeats, her voice coming out harder.

“You must give of yourself to everyone,” Adrien says. “A little piece of your soul, given in good faith, to all you meet, be they your worst enemy.”

Marinette gives a little hiccuping laugh out of sheer reaction. “Thought I had to pay you the price.”

“It is a price.”

Another long quiet, punctuated by Adrien’s low purring.

“Done,” Marinette says.

“Done,” Adrien says. “Sleep, Marinette.”

“We have a new student with us today!” Mme. Bustier announces the next day. “Everyone, please welcome Alya Cesaire.”

* * *

Marinette sits, curled up against the cold, in her darkened one-woman apartment, the detritus of her life scattered about her: paintings, vases, her business degree tossed carelessly on the coffee table, half-buried below fabric samples, a small, sleek laptop off to the side. A picture of her and Alya and Nino placed reverentially on a bookshelf, a small sparkling diamond ring on Alya’s finger. A bottle of wine abandoned beside that.

Adrien pads out of her bedroom and leaps lithely onto the small couch beside her, her arm shifting automatically to allow him space to slip up next to her, purring.

They sit like that for a while, staring out of her picture window, Marinette’s fingers stroking gently over Adrien’s back.

“Adrien,” Marinette murmurs quietly.

“Yes?”

“You’ve been good to me,” Marinette says, “very good.”

Adrien’s purring takes on a distinctly smug tone.

“And you’ve always been there for me,” Marinette says.

“Yes.”

Marinette’s fingers still on Adrien’s back, and he looks upwards towards her, flicking an ear.

“So I need to offer something of equal value, right?” Marinette says. “That’s how it works.”

Adrien blinks, once, slowly.

Marinette leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of Adrien’s head.

“I give you my heart, Adrien,” Marinette says. Her voice carries no melodrama, no ringing conviction. Just a quiet, solid statement of truth, calm and even, constant as the northern star. “For as long as I live you’ll be a part of my life. You’ll be loved. You’ll be cared for.”

Adrien butts his head gently into the underside of Marinette’s chin.

“I give you my heart,” she repeats.

They sit like that as the stars wheel overhead and the moon sinks below the horizon, until Marinette falls asleep.

“For every wish, a price. Something of equal value,” Adrien murmurs to himself.

Something of equal value.

Adrien thinks on it for some while.

Then he wishes.

Her neighbors are woken at around six by her scream when she wakes to find a young, lanky, tousel-haired man sprawled, asleep, on the couch next to her.


	2. To Have One's Heart in One's Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, before anyone starts asking, there _will not be a continuation_. My decision is final on this. This is not my AU to begin with, it's the original artist's, and they didn't release it to me or anyone else to do with as they pleased, and I'm not going to take away the opportunity for them to develop it as they want.
> 
> Any comments asking for another chapter will get deleted.

“What the fuck!” Marinette screams, kicking out automatically as she scrambles off of her couch, landing flat on her ass and nearly braining herself on the edge of her coffee table. Her heel hits him in the chin, snapping his head to the side; the strange man—”What the _fuck!”_ Marinette screams again, louder, backing away and scrambling to her feet and nearly braining herself on her fireplace mantel—wakes with a grunt of pain.

“What the fuck are you doing in here!” Marinette says. She takes another swift pair of steps back, her hip hitting the bookcase, The framed picture of her and Nino and Alya wobbles. The empty wine bottle beside it topples onto its side and rolls off, falling onto her foot with a dull _whud_.

As the rush of adrenaline finally smashes into her system like a rampaging bull elephant, the man rolls off of the couch and onto his hands and knees, arching his back, his back making quiet popping noises as he stretches. Then, moving lithely and smoothly, he gets his feet beneath him and rises, curious gaze panning around her apartment.

The man is tall, at least half a head, maybe a full head taller than her, and though his frame is spare and lanky she senses that he has more than enough steel-cable muscle to pick her up by the arms and lift her over his head—maybe with a bit of effort, she’s not exactly a waif. She scrabbles sideways with a shaking hand and draws the fireplace poker from its stand with a metallic _whung._

“Who the fuck are you?” she says, stepping to the side, placing her coffee table between them.

At the sound of her voice, the man’s head snaps towards her, and a broad, boyishly happy grin appears on his face. “Marinette!” he says, and bounds around the table in one, two, three long skips. He snatches her up in a crushing hug, squishing his cheek against hers in a move so completely familiar that the bit of her brain screaming on red alert locks down for a second in blank astonishment.

Then she cracks him on the shin with the poker.

The man drops her, howling and hopping and clutching at his leg, and promptly falls backwards over her coffee table. Marinette uses the opportunity to back away towards where she’d tossed her purse the last night, poker still aimed towards the strange man as he lies on her floor, momentarily stunned.

Without taking her eyes off of him, she rummages in her purse and pulls out her pepper spray, arming it with a flick of her thumb. She aims it at him, shakily.

“Who,” she says, “the fuck are you. How the fuck did you get in here?”

The man groans insensibly.

She studies him while he slides his legs off of the table and struggles to stand up.

He’s wearing very nice shoes, black patent leather, shiny as glass, square-toed, but, oddly enough, white socks underneath. Plain black slacks, a fitted white silk button-up beneath that, the buttons mother-of-pearl and fiery opalescent in the rosy glow of dawn. Black gloves, leather again, with a cutout at the backs of his hands, the material thin and tight, in the style of riding gloves.

Her heart stops as the man bats a flap of his coat off of his head, revealing a mop of goldenrod hair.

The coat is odd, certainly not one that you’d see in any shop. Short-sleeved, with a flared collar, fitted neatly to his form. No visible buttons or zippers. Extra material draping across the shoulders, the seam midway along each bicep and down his chest in simple, angular patterns. A flap, falling along his back like a particularly narrow, pointy cape. Another bit probably meant to wrap around the body like a toga that had fallen over his face when she’d knocked him tail over teakettle, the bit he’d batted away.

And at the hollow of his throat, a shiny brass bell.

This _motherfucker_ was wearing one of her designs. One of the designs in her battered, red leather-bound sketchbook. The one where all her little midnight doodles went, to go unrealized and unseen by everyone except her and Adrien.

Focusing on his outfit rather than the fact that she’d woken up with her stalker sleeping on her legs has given her the time for panic to flee, replaced by cold fury. When she levels the pepper spray again, the poker held ready at her side, her aim is steady. When she speaks again, her voice is lethal and unwavering.

“Who the fuck are you?” she says.

The man gets up, still a little unsteady and blinks big, confused emerald-green eyes at her.

“Marinette?” he says.

“Who!” she says, “The Fuck! Are you!”

The man flinches away from her as she takes a step forwards and raises the poker.

“It’s me, Marinette,” he says slowly. “Your Adrien.”

“Bull _shit!_ ” she snarls.

“Marinette, please, it’s me,” he says but flinches again as she advances another step, raising his hands protectively in front of him. “I swear, it’s me, it’s me. Uh, ah! Remember your first wish? You wished that your parent’s bakery would be successful?”

He continues, counting wishes off on his fingers. “The price for that one was a place in your home. And then after that you wanted a sewing machine, and I asked for six months of daily pampering, and you haggled me down to two and a half. And then after that—”

He pauses as he hears the pepper spray clatter to the floor and watches uncertainly as the poker threatens to do the same, Marinette’s fingers gone nerveless.

“What—What the fuck?” she says. “Adrien? It’s really you?”

“Yes,” Adrien says.

“What did I wish for last Wednesday?” Marinette says after a moment.

“You needed to get groceries but didn’t want to get out of bed,” Adrien says. “You wished that the fridge was filled, gave me fifty euros, and then threatened to get out the spray bottle when I got ten kilos of camembert.”

Marinette’s eyes get a little wider.

“How the fuck are you, uh. How are you not a cat?”

The poker finally makes its bid for freedom, slides free of her loosened grip, and gouges a long scrape in her hardwood flooring.

Adrien shrugs and smiles. “I could just be a very convincing hallu—”

“Hallucination,” Marinette finishes.

“You could scratch me behind the ear if you want,” Adrien says.

“Holy fuck,” Marinette breathes. “You’re actually here. Standing in front of me. As a human. Uh. Can you, like. Shapeshift now? Turn back into a cat?”

Adrien shrugs. His brows knit together in concentration for a few seconds.

“Apparently not.”

He frowns at Marinette’s suddenly stifled giggles. “What?”

“Check your head,” she manages to get out before her giggles turn into choked cackling.

Adrien’s frown deepens as he steps into her bathroom.

“Oh, come on, it’s not that funny,” he says as he steps back out and Marinette’s cackling turns into full-out laughter, his tail lashing the air irritably, ears flat against his head.

“It’s not that funny,” he says again a second later, a little louder, folding his arms across his chest. Marinette sits as her legs abruptly give out and wipes tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Adrenaline giggles. From just now. Kinda thought you’d broken in or something.”

Adrien’s frown turns into a grimace of apology. “I could’ve done that better,” he says. “Given you some warning.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Marinette says. “But, just one question here, why are you suddenly human now?”

Before Adrien can answer, a brief wail of sirens and a flash of lights permeate the apartment. Marinette looks at Adrien, then hauls herself to her feet and walks wobbily over to the window.

“Oh, shit,” she says. “It’s the gendarmes. Someone must’ve called them after hearing the noise. Adrien, go grab my cell, quick, dial Sabrina.”

Adrien’s ears flatten again. “I hate that woman,” he says.

“You just don’t like that she’s a dog person,” Marinette says. “Now stop whining, I’d rather not wish you out of a jail cell.”

* * *

One hastily bribed policewoman later (free pastries from the Dupain-Cheng Patisserie for a month, delivered in person, daily) and Marinette and Adrien sit across from each other at her dinner table.

“So,” Marinette says. “You’re human now. Why?”

Adrien laces his fingers together on the table before him. “You named your price, but made no wish,” he says. “One heart, yours, in my keeping for as long as you lived.”

“I was tipsy,” Marinette says dismissively. “And it was just repayment.”

“But you meant it,” Adrien says. “And repayment’s only for wishes. So, by the cosmic forces which compel me”—he makes finger-waggling mystic gestures in the air—”I needed to make a wish.”

“And what was the wish?” Marinette says.

“That I could be the kind of person who’d be worthy of that,” he says. “That I could be the kind of person who could love you, and care for you. Like you wanted.”

Marinette blinks at him. Then she gets up, walks around the table, and hugs him tightly.

“You silly, silly cat,” she mutters. “You’ve always been that.”

* * *

_Ding-dong._

“I’ll get it,” Sabine says as Tom looks up from his newspaper.

She sets aside the baguette slice she’d been buttering, slips her feet into her slippers, and trots to the intercom system, thumbing a button at the bottom.

“Dupain-Chengs,” Sabine says.

“Hi, Mama,” Marinette says, her voice a little crackly over the speaker.

“Mari! Dear, this is unexpected, let me ring you in.”

Sabine listens for the familiar _clunk clunk clunk_ of footsteps as Marinette ascends the staircase at the back of the bakery. She and Tom frown in bemusement after a minute.

Not a _clunk clunk clunk._ But a double step, a _cl-clunk_ _cl-clunk_ _cl-clunk_ instead. A visitor? And one she hadn’t mentioned.

She and Tom share a glance as Marinette unlocks their front door and comes up.

“Mari,” Sabine says, bustling forwards and enveloping Marinette with motherly affection. “It’s so good to see you, how have you been, are you settling in all right in your new place _who’s this_?”

She directs the last question with all the innocent cheer of a shark’s smile at the tall, lanky young man standing just behind Marinette, scratching sheepishly at the back of his neck.

“Mama, Papa,” Marinette says, gesturing slightly, “this is my boyfriend. Adrien.”

“We named the cat Adrien,” Tom rumbles like an incipient avalanche.

“Funny thing about that,” Marinette says.


End file.
